Negotiating Jewishness in Benjamin Netanyahu's Speech

Unity or Diversity Negotiating Jewishness in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech before Congress and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Magisters der Philosophie an der Karl-Franzens Universität Graz Vorgelegt von Bernhard KOGLER-SOBL am Institut für Amerikanistik Begutachter: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stefan L. Brandt Graz, 2016 Unity or Diversity Negotiating Jewishness in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech before Congress and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stefan L. Brandt Bernhard Kogler-Sobl Studienkennzahl: B 190 299 344 Studienrichtung: Lehramtsstudium Englisch, PP Email Address: [email protected] 2016-06-08 Table of Contents Introduction ___________________________________________________________________________ 1 1. Jewishness as a Subject of Negotiation _________________________________________ 5 1.1. Defining Identity ___________________________________________________________________ 5 1.2. Dimensions of Jewish Identity_____________________________________________________ 7 1.2.1. Religion: Judaism as a Definite Marker of Identity _________________________ 8 1.2.2. Ethnicity: Jewishness as Cultural Heritage __________________________________ 9 1.2.3. Race: Jewishness as ‘Genetic Heritage’ _____________________________________ 10 1.2.4. Nationality: A People Living Abroad ________________________________________ 12 1.2.5. Fate: Identification through Victimization _________________________________ 15 1.3. Shades of Being Jewish ____________________________________________________________ 17 2. Jon Stewart and the Role of Humor in Negotiating Jewish Identity ______________________________________________________________________________ 19 2.1. Criticizing and Defending Jewishness with Humor _____________________________ 19 2.2. A Jewish Take on Religion and Politics __________________________________________ 23 2.3. Deconstructing Myths in the Media ______________________________________________ 29 3. The Importance of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu for Jewish Americans and US Politics _______________________________________________ 39 4. ‘One People’: Jewishness in Netanyahu’s Speech before Congress ____________________________________________________________________________ 46 4.1. Us and Them: Gaining Authority through Othering_____________________________ 48 4.2. Esther as the Myth of a Champion for the Jews _________________________________ 51 5. Heterodoxy: Jewishness in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart _______________ 55 5.1. Undermining Authority ___________________________________________________________ 55 5.2. ‘Angry Jews’: Using a Stereotype to Reclaim Diversity _________________________ 62 Conclusion _____________________________________________________________________________ 65 Introduction The negotiation of Jewish identity is more complex than that of many other social identities. Like blackness or masculinity, Jewishness is a social reality. Unlike the two other social identities it cannot be instantly assigned to a person at the first glance. Nor are there any definitions as clear as those for, say a Christian or an Austrian identity. The question of who is Jewish and who is not, does not have a straight answer. Indeed, there are so many different approaches that the question has merited its own article on Wikipedia. Apparently, the article “Jews” could not answer the question comprehensively and “Who is a Jew?” had to become an article in its own right. If ending the title of an encyclopedic article with a question mark were not enough to indicate the complexity and uncertainty of its subject, the caption on top of this particular article would suffice. As of February 2016, it reads: “This article may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may only interest a specific audience. Please help by spinning off or relocating any relevant information, and removing excessive detail”. The heading could be interpreted as marking a discussion of insiders, which is hardly of interest to the general public. Henry Bial, a Jewish scholar of performance studies, argues that “the only people who care about the answer” to the question “Who is Jewish?” are Jews, anti- Semites and those who “we might call philo-Semites, non-Jews who have a fascination with things Jewish” (137). However, I would argue against Bial's perception that Jewish identity is merely a topic for the immediately affected, the crudely obsessed or the especially interested. The multiple layers of Jewish identity and how they are negotiated by the Jewish community have a distinct impact on politics, especially in the United States. A vivid example of this claim is provided by a Jewish American senator these days. The primaries and caucuses for the US presidential election in 2016 have seen the rise of an unlikely contender. Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont is not only the first Jewish American to win a presidential primary election, but he also managed to put a veritable challenge to Hillary Clinton, the odds-on favorite in the race for the Democratic nomination. With social identity playing a considerable role in the political process of the United States, it is rather common for potential candidates to thrust their identities into the spotlight, especially if this might mobilize a relevant group of voters or donors. And it makes sense to expect, for example, that Barack Obama has a perspective on the troubles of African Americans which is different from that of a white candidate, or that Hillary Clinton has first-hand knowledge of what it means to be a woman working within predominantly male power structures. Bernie Sanders, however, has not made his Jewish identity a core feature of his campaign. Unexpected, or undesired, as this move was, it raised a question which was 2 Bernhard Kogler-Sobl asked by the media on various occasions and which CNN formulated in the following way: “Is Sanders intentionally keeping his Jewish faith in the background during his campaign?” To this question, Sanders responded: I am very proud to be Jewish and being Jewish is so much of what I am. Look, my father's family was wiped out by Hitler in the holocaust. I know about what crazy and radical and extremist politics mean. I learned that lesson as a tiny, tiny child when my mother would take me shopping and we would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms, because they were in Hitler's concentration camps. (“Sanders: Holocaust taught me about political extremism”) Contrary to the wording of the question, Sanders' answer illustrates that Jewish identity is not necessarily a question of faith. It opens up a historic or racial dimension of Jewishness. “How can I, as a Jew who lost 13 relatives in the Holocaust, do anything that would betray Israel?”, Henry Kissinger once defended his hard stance on Israeli policies (Troy). Despite the similarity in tone of Sanders' and Kissinger's account of their family's fate in the holocaust, Jewish self-identification has undergone a major shift over the last few decades. Kissinger reverted to this part of his identity, when it promised to bring home an argument, but he would never express a sense of pride regarding his Jewish identity. As a matter of fact, he probably could not have afforded to do so during his time as America's first diplomat for the Nixon administration (ibid.). By now, the political atmosphere has changed and former vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman is a living example of this change. Today's Jewish community in the US is way more outspoken and Jewish Americans often proudly assert their membership of 'the tribe' (cf. Bial 137-139). This new presence of Jewish Americans as explicitly Jewish Americans in the public sphere is bound to have an impact on political discourse. Both the fact that a person is Jewish and sometimes the degree to which a person is considered to be Jewish, are used to legitimize or delegitimize their positions. Whether Bernie Sanders does or does not use the word Judaism to describe his identity, whether he does or does not give a speech in front of AIPAC1, is discussed widely among Jewish Americans and beyond. But while the self-confessed socialist does not seem eager to make the case for his agenda by bringing in his Jewishness, other protagonists have repeatedly done so in the past. It is the tension between the narratives propagated by two Jewish men, Jon Stewart and Benjamin Netanyahu, which will serve as the core of this diploma thesis 1 The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is the largest pro-Israel lobby in the US. In March 2016, Bernie Sanders was the only remaining contender for a party's nomination who did not attend AIPAC's policy conference. 3 Unity or Diversity On March 3, 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an address to the U.S. Congress. In “the most anticipated speech to Congress by a foreign leader in many years” (Baker), as the New York Times would have it, Netanyahu emphasized the risks of a nuclear deal with Iran, which was being negotiated at the time. In order to promote his political agenda, Netanyahu painted the picture of a united and endangered global Jewry, which needed to be protected. The timing of his visit was criticized by the US government, because it took place only two weeks before the Israeli legislative election, in which Netanyahu's conservative Likud party hoped to keep the relative majority of seats in the Knesset. Furthermore, the Obama administration was working hard at the time

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